Indian rupee treads water, far forward premiums stick to downtrend

MUMBAI: The Indian rupee was little changed in early trading on Thursday, wedged between modest declines in regional peers and dollar sales from foreign and local private lenders, most likely on behalf of corporate clients.

Dollar-rupee forward premiums, meanwhile, extended their weekly decline with the 1-year implied yield easing to an over one-month low of 2.39%, down about 20 basis points this week.

Easing of immediate rupee depreciation pressures following the US trade deal, pickup in exporter hedging activity and improvement in domestic rupee liquidity all contributed to pushing forward premiums lower, traders said.

“Overall, interbank bias appears skewed towards receiving far forwards at the moment,” a swap trader at a bank said. In the spot market, the rupee was down marginally at 90.45 per dollar as of 09:50 a.m. IST.

The currency is up more than 1.5% on the week so far. While the US-India trade deal announcement has removed some uncertainty over Indian assets, traders and analysts are still awaiting the finer print for details.

“No official documents have been released, and neither side has formally published the final terms.

Market is now waiting for confirmation and finer details before extending the rupee’s rally further,“ said Amit Pabari, managing director at FX advisory firm CR Forex.

In global markets, Asian currencies were trading with modest cuts, while Asian stocks slumped as concerns about the exploding costs of artificial intelligence investment encouraged a rotation out of tech.

MSCI’s gauge of Asian shares outside of Japan was down over 1.5%, while Indian equities were faring better with only a 0.3% cut on the benchmark Nifty 50 index.